Paperback Writer

Okay, so I should give you at least a little background to get started:

I'm 9 months pregnant, due in 4 days (New Year's Day, 2012). The countdown has officially begun. This is the countdown to... literally the moment my life will change, in a big way. Bigger for me than most people. I'm sure it will be for the better, but I have to tell you, I'm getting scared. Labor worries aside, my life hasn't always been super (ahem) organized or put together. I fake it pretty well, but underneath the surface, I'm just an eccentric nut trying to find my place in this seemingly nuttier world. And if I'm still struggling with this at 28 years old, how will I teach my daughter to find her way? To quote my pal below, "That is just the highlights."

But I can explore that anxiety-inducing question later. My problem now is that I'm officially on maternity leave. The company I work for was generous enough to give me 12 weeks of leave time, but not so generous to pay for it all - 6 of those weeks I will have no paycheck. Add to that the rising cost of daycare, and I'm thinking about working from home full time. I've done it part time for about 9 years now.

I would do just about anything (legal) to stay at home with my baby, but those 9 years have also made me a little wiser to the world of freelance anything. A job that offers $500 for a logo design is okay until you put 500 hours into it or create 500 sample logos.

Still, I was optimistic this morning, at 2am, when I woke up with a craving for cheese & crackers and an appetite for finding a stay-at-home job. I thought that maybe I could avoid the more creative jobs that all those other freelancers were fighting for. I could be the gal rooting around at the bottom of the barrel for the less glamorous jobs. I thought, "That's where I could really shine..."

Two hours later, I was back in bed with a panic attack. The 15th job post I read triggered anxiety better than any contraction or shortage of baby kicks:

I am looking for someone to help me write a book about my life....raised around *****, gambling, terrible deaths of loved ones, my own drug addiction, abusive husbands, prison time and getting my life back together for myself and my daughter.  That is just the highlights.
Pay Offered: Ask Me

First of all, let me just say that this was one of many vague and, shall I say, mis-priced job requests. Second, take out the drug addiction, abusive relationships, gambling, and (most likely) whatever "*****" is, and this is my life too. In some ways, I'm living the "Sheen Dream" and need to refocus. So, no offense to whoever posted this - on some level, I get it.

What I don't get is... These are the jobs freelancers are fighting for! Yes, these jobs:

I need a website. It's simple just info page gallery and contacts. No big graphics and nothing fancy but I want it to look like [insert absurdly detailed, graphics-heavy Flash site link here].
Pay Offered: $250

And to take any one of these jobs assuming that the client will be 1. available; 2. not crazy; and 3. able to pay on time -- is a little risky to say the least. It's only Day 2 of project "Find At-Home Work", so I promise myself I won't lose hope just yet.

In the meantime, I'm going to continue to build my blog and work on some (hopefully) sell-able creative projects. Tomorrow I will calm myself down and start the search again.